A Timeless City Ready for a National Moment
Summary
The NFL Draft brought the country to Pittsburgh, but what they found was a city far bigger than football. Between the yellow bridges, Primanti’s sandwiches, riverfront crowds at Point State Park, and neighborhoods buzzing long after the final pick, Pittsburgh started feeling less like a host city and more like somewhere people wanted to come back to. KHM partnered with VisitPITTSBURGH to turn Draft Weekend into a national reputation moment built from the things locals already knew made the city special.
Client
VisitPITTSBURGH
Scope
Agency of Record
Campaign Title
VisitPITTSBURGH x NFL Draft
Results
668
digital placements
883
broadcast clips
1.18B
UVM
15M+
broadcast impressions
$109.8M
earned media value
805K+
attendees
43%
of visitors came from outside the region
Pittsburgh Didn’t Need a New Story
It already had one. Full of history that you could feel while walking Market Square before kickoff. Crossing the Roberto Clemente bridge shoulder-to-shoulder with fans donned in black and gold. The challenge was helping the rest of the world finally experience the Pittsburgh locals knew.
The Coverage Started With Football. Then Pittsburgh Took Over.
At first, reporters came looking for Draft coverage. Then they started talking about the neighborhoods. The food scene. The walkability downtown. The way the city somehow felt massive during the Draft and still personal at the same time.
Stories stretched beyond sports pages into lifestyle, entertainment, culture, and travel coverage because Pittsburgh gave people more to talk about than football.
Turns out, a city with this much character is hard to define by one headline.
You Can’t Fake that Pittsburgh Feeling
The best moments happened walking across the Andy Warhol Bridge at sunset. Eating pierogies between interviews. Hearing “yinz ready?” from somebody on the street before the first pick of the night.
That’s what changed the coverage. National reporters stopped writing about Pittsburgh like a host city and started talking about it like a place they connected with personally. One People Magazine editor called it “the best trip ever.” Another writer from Variety admitted they already missed their daily walks across the bridges before they’d even left town.
That kind of reaction doesn’t come from PR talking points. It comes from communities people can feel for themselves.
Pittsburgh Started Showing Up in Everyone’s Feed
People saw packed bars in the Strip District. Crowds gathered along the river. Fans flooding downtown in their favorite team colors. The storytelling extended through influencer partnerships and a three-day-takeover on People Magazine’s Instagram account, helping Pittsburgh show up online the same way it felt in person: full of energy, welcoming, and impossible to scroll past.
A Shared Sense of Place
VisitPITTSBURGH brought together more than 15 civic, tourism, business, and community partners to build a unified media playbook rooted in what makes the city feel like Pittsburgh — football culture, yes, but also the neighborhoods, rivers, restaurants, arts scene, and momentum locals experience every day.
Make Pittsburgh the Place People Remember
The Draft was already capturing attention, but the opportunity was to make sure people remembered everything around it too. The neighborhoods, the grit, that downtown energy, and the feeling that something here is moving forward. By the end of the week, Pittsburgh didn’t feel like a backdrop to the NFL Draft, it felt like the main event.
